Читать книгу The Burning Glass - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 7

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M. De Mora rose and paced up and down the shining floor, glancing at Julie with a sorrow that knew not how to console another sorrow.

'Do you not believe that I shall return to you?' he said at last, in accents vibrant with feeling.

'Ciel! as if I doubted you!' sobbed Julie from the cushions.

'And you believe—you understand—that I have the best of reasons for my departure? That I must, at all costs, recover my health for your sake—that I must achieve our marriage soon?'

'You have the best of reasons,' she agreed. Do you think I blame you?'

She looked up, pressing a handkerchief to her lips; her tear-filled eyes looked over it, intense with love and terror.

'But I am frightened,' she added. 'Frightened of the future—three hundred leagues apart—and your illness—'

'Do not think of that,' he replied hastily. 'I was blooded twice last night, and it has left me a little weak.'

As he spoke, he sat down on the red morocco chair in front of Julie's desk with the air of one who has not strength to stand. His face was now in the full light of the window, and to Julie it looked like that of a dying man.

'After all, why need you go?' she cried impetuously in her pain. 'There are better doctors in Paris—you know that M. Lorry is worth all the physicians in Spain.'

M. de Mora replied gently,—

'There is the question of our marriage, Julie. Once in Madrid I can press that.'

Mademoiselle de Lespinasse rose, her lovely figure dad in the flowing, delicate fabrics outlined against the red ottoman.

'Our marriage she said in a kind of hasty passion. 'That has been your torment for six years—'

'My hope, my solace,' he interrupted, eagerly and warmly.

'The Fuentès will never consent,' replied Julie, with heaving bosom. 'Why should they? Grand Dieu, why?'

'They shall They must!' said M. de Mora, with the weary persistency of a sick man. He put his hand to his head and frowned.

'They never will!' answered Julie. She spoke with painful clear-sightedness. 'What am I that your family should accept me?'

'The most admired woman in Paris.'

Julie lifted her shoulders.

'That means so little! I know people caress me, flatter me—marry me, no! All my life I have been made to feel I am—apart!'

'Julie!' cried M. de Mora. 'How can you speak of these things now?'

'I must speak of them—they are always in my heart, mon ami.'

'Then I have failed,' he returned, sadly and wistfully.

'You! my dearest and my love, the noblest, the truest of men If you have failed—mon Dieu!—you have made me so happy that I have not known how to live! Only I must think that I have nothing to give in return!'

She stood facing him, her hands clasped on her bosom, her whole body quivering, taut with her feeling.

'I am forty years old—I am ugly—I am sad—I am penniless—I am nameless. You are young—a Spanish grandee.'

The Marquis interrupted.

'I love you, and that makes us equal in all.'

Still she was not satisfied.

'Do you know who I am?' she asked restlessly. 'My Julie.'

'You evade me.'

'What do I care who you are?'

'All these years that you have known me, you have never asked.'

'No.'

'No one has told you?'

'No.'

'Mon Dieu! it is an ugly story!'

'Julie,' said M. de Mora gently, 'why think of it?'

'Think of it!' she replied passionately. 'Do you imagine that because I never speak of it I ever forget? It is part of my life—it is my life! It is what your family throw at you when you speak of marrying me!'

M. de Mora looked at her with concern. An unhealthy colour began to flame in his cheeks, and he rested his hot head in his hand. Julie turned about and pulled at the cushions on the ottoman; her piquant profile was towards him, and his tired glance dwelt on it with infinite love.

'My brother, the Comte D'Albon,' she said, 'has heard rumours of our affection. He is so afraid that on the occasion of a marriage I might claim my mother's name and a portion of the family fortunes, that he has called a council at Forez, and asked lawyers what claims I have. Mon Dieu!' she added, with stormy pride, 'how little they know me. Nothing to me, neither name nor money, is worth a moment's consideration beside your happiness!'

'How does all this affect my happiness, Julie, save only in so far as it saddens you?' replied M. de Mora tenderly.

'I want you to know,' she replied, without looking round. 'I often wished to speak to you—but I was too happy. Now that you are leaving me—to fight for this marriage which would be untold joy for me—I want you to know—'

'I was aware that your mother was the Comtesse d'Albon, Julie,' said the Marquis, half-sadly, as if he regretted that she should insist on speaking on this subject.

'I suppose every one knows that,' replied Julie with some bitterness. 'I loved her, Pepe. She loved me, and took me to live with her at d'Avanges, but she never would—never dared—acknowledge me. I did not know who I was. She educated me, she caressed me, she wept over me, she flattered me—and then she died, leaving me to learn the truth.'

Her tone softened, her head drooped, and she spoke with a regret that went too deep for bitterness.

'The Comtesse gave me the key of a chest full of money—I was proud—I gave it to my brother, Camillo. My mother had dared leave me nothing but a pension of a few crowns. Mon ami! I was an object of charity! My sister, Diana, was married to the Comte Gaspard de Vichy.'

Julie paused at this name and glanced at M. de Mora, but it meant nothing to him. Sadly he waited for her to continue.

'I went to live with them at Champrond. I became the governess of her children—unpaid, unwanted, in the way—the butt for their humours. They told me who I was—'

She paused, and drew a deep breath.

'I loved the children—especially little Abel—I love him still. For the rest, suffering, sorrow, humiliations, degradations! M. de Vichy's sister, Madame du Deffand, came to Champrond; she asked me to go to Paris with her—she was blind—she saw in me'—here Julie's voice was very bitter—'a useful slave. I had been well-trained for the part. I could not accept—I had no money—I wrote to my brother, and was refused.'

'Mon Dieu I' said M. de Mora.

'Oh, I am telling you nothing,' cried Julie hastily. 'Nothing! Why should I tell you what will sadden you? There are'—she added with a shudder, 'horrors in my history Why should you know of them—and—I could tell them to none!'

She looked at him tenderly; she was thinking that he would hardly be able to understand her story, even if he knew every detail—he whose birth was undisputed, whose position had always been secure, whose means had ever been sufficient for his desires.

'Till the day I left Madame du Deffand, I was never happy,' she said quietly, 'though I tried to persuade myself I was, to console myself with the brouhaha of society—then, when I was free, I was content awhile—with the true friendship of D'Alembert. Then, mon ami, when I met you, when I knew that you loved me, then I also knew what it was to be happy.'

She turned to him with a frank look of love and her eyes shone with gratitude.

'Whatever I suffer now,' she added, 'I have to thank you for six years of joy! Eh, it is a common thing to be loved if one is young and lovely and rich; it is a great triumph to be loved if one is poor and plain and old!'

M. de Mora rose and came across to Julie and laid his hand gently on hers, which rested on the crimson cushions.

She looked up at him quickly.

'You cannot understand, can you? Though we have been soul to soul, you cannot understand?'

'Is it my Julie who speaks?' he asked, with loving reproach. 'Julie de Lespinasse, adored by so many?'

She answered swiftly,—

'My friends have been wonderful! I have been loved more than I deserve! It is not that I meant—I have always been different, apart—marked.'

M. de Mora would have interrupted, but Julie, pressing his hands in her nervous fingers, continued in her hoarse, hurrying voice that was so full of pain,—

'You do not know what I have to look back on, how they have all of them made me feel what I am—the scenes—the bitterness. The only one who loves me, my nephew Abel, does not know the truth.'

'Julie, why are you distressing yourself? Mon Dieu! what has any of this to do with you and me?'

She was trembling, but she kept her voice steady, though with a great effort as she replied,—

'I want you to know all about the woman you are going to insist on marrying. I want you also, mon ami, to understand something of that darkness that clouded my youth—that shadows me even now—the secret of my connection with Madame du Deffand.'

'Her brother, the Comte de Vichy, was your sister's husband—one sought no further than that.'

M. de Mora spoke gently, but in some agitation. He was not troubled so much by Julie's words as by her air of ill-repressed pain and confusion.

'There is much further to seek,' she said, with pallid lips. 'Gaspard de Vichy is my father.'

M. de Mora stared at her a second, then, as the full meaning of the horror to which she had been sacrificed came to him, he gave a little cry of revulsion and disgust.

'You see now,' added Julie feverishly, 'that the very man who should have provided for me and protected me, had the strongest of reasons for ignoring me and thrusting me out, and why all those who should have combined to help me have combined to crush me—and why now there is such fear at Forez and Champrond lest I should claim the names of either D'Albon or de Vichy!'

She sank on to the sofa exhausted; a fit of coughing shook her; she turned her face away and buried it in the cushions. With a passionate gesture, M. de Mora put his arm round her shaking shoulders.

'What do either of these names matter to you,' he cried impetuously, 'since you will so soon have mine?'

Julie moved, lifted her head and caught hold of her lover with a movement that was almost convulsive.

Her face was distorted, her lids swollen with hot tears.

'I cannot tell—my gratitude—' she stammered.

M. de Mora came beside her on the sofa and drew her to him; her head sank on his shoulder. She gave a little sigh; for a brief moment she again tasted something of the joy that had made heaven on earth for her in the early days of this idyll.

She was absolutely sincere when she said that her gratitude was beyond words; it seemed to her a miracle, for which she should be thankful on her knees, that this man, young, noble, fêted, a hero of the salons, courted by women who possessed everything, should love her and be faithful to her with so pure a love and so entire a faith. That he was eager to marry her filled her with a devotion that she felt her entire life could not repay. No calculated thought, no consideration of interest, influenced her feeling. M. de Mora was the person dearest in the world to her tender and passionate heart: their characters, their tastes, were similar; they had everything in common save their histories. Their conception of love—elevated, noble, sentimental, elegant—was the same. Never had any humour, any action on the part of M. de Mora, offended the delicate sensibilities of Julie, and never had any caprice or whim on her part hurt the trusting affection of the Marquis.

Never during the six years of their friendship that had ended in the secret betrothal, had either given the other cause for jealousy, despite the long absences, the continual opposition and obstacles in their way and the brilliant life each led surrounded by admirers and dear friends.

Each had understood the other always, and it was this sense of complete security that was almost dearer to Julie than anything else. She knew that, from the first—whether at Versailles among the diversions of the Court, in Madrid with his own people, far away in Catalonia or Valencia—he was always hers; that he adored her every instant of his days; that he turned from those nearest to him at the mere thought of her; that all his life revolved round her, their meetings, their future union. To such a woman as Julie such knowledge was as the nectar of Paradise.

Even her personal love for the man was not so strong 'an emotion in her sensitive soul as her overwhelming gratitude for what he had brought into her life.

She lifted her head and looked at him; her thoughts were swung back to the present with a shock by the sudden sight of the face that looked so tenderly down.

The agitation of her communication had shaken his frail frame; his complexion was the ghastly hue Of an olive skin when pale; his great Southern eyes were shadowed underneath with purple; he breathed with difficulty, and his forehead and upper lip were damp. As she looked at him he made an effort to smile, and the gleam of his white teeth made his colour appear yet more unnatural.

'Mon Dieu!' cried Julie, while a pang of terror went through her. 'Why do I talk of anything? You are ill and we must part—that fills the world for me!'

She clung to him, quivering, her frail cheek was still reddened where she had pressed against his laces, and her jasmine sprays were crushed into perfume against his breast.

'You must not frighten yourself, mon amie,' said M. de Mora, who had scarcely strength to speak, but who was animated by the nervous, feverish energy common to some forms of his disease. 'You will write—our letters will be the breath of life to each other.'

'The Spanish post only comes in twice a week,' answered Julie. 'But I shall send M. D'Alembert to fetch it as soon as it reaches Paris.'

'Poor M. D'Alembert!'

But Julie had no thought for anything but her immediate grief.

'You will never fail me?' she cried. 'You will write often?'

'As if I could live without writing to you! And I shall write you the best of news—I shall tell you that I am recovering—that my family have consented, that I am returning strong and well to claim you.'

He spoke sincerely, from the glamour of a sick man's illusions; those last hopes that gild the final stages of a mortal disease coloured his perspective, and he was a Southern, sanguine, impetuous, twenty-six years of age and deeply in love.

No such rosy clouds veiled the future from Julie.

Dreadful premonitions clutched at her heart. She thought she saw the impress of death on those features she loved so well, and that in surrendering him to his family she was losing him for ever.

He kissed her forehead; his lips were so cold she could hardly refrain from a shudder; her glance fell to the frail hand that rested on her lap; it seemed bloodless and was dark-stained round the nails. With a movement of agony she rose and went restlessly to the window.

M. de Mora coughed with his handkerchief to his lips. When he took it away he hastily crushed it into his hand that Julie might not see that it was stained with blood.

Such a lassitude was on him that he could hardly hold his head up; he felt that he could face no more emotion; he would have liked to have fallen asleep on the ottoman, holding Julie's hand.

With an effort, he picked up a volume that lay on the acacia-wood table near at hand.

'What is this?' he asked languidly.

'Why, that is M. de Guibert's forbidden book,' replied Julie distractedly.